involuntarily answer things like sometimes. And I'm really not trying to be zen or anything. It's just that I know Richard Baker is a generality. Yeah. What's particular is I'm a talking person right now. Richard Baker, it's clearly a generalization. It has no reality. I give it some reality, but its reality comes through a lot of particulars. And the word Dharmakaya... which means the body of Buddha, means actually everything as space, as sentient space. But the word dharma means particulars.

[01:03]

But it means what happens when you pay attention to particulars, the body that's built up is like space. And that means, if you really give the individualities, the specialties, attention, the space that then arises through it. Now, all of us accept that the world is in flux, is changing, and so forth.

[02:09]

That is, we accept it intellectually. But, for example, if you if your thoughts keep returning to the continuity of the visual world, the visual world, you are actually functioning through an idea of permanence. If your thoughts keep returning, if you're... Oh dear. Okay. We have a sense of location. That's one of these points. Okay.

[03:25]

I can be caught in my thoughts. Or I can bring my sense of location back here, out of my thoughts. So I can have a sense of being located here, but my thoughts are still going on. Okay. So I'm trying to create a vocabulary here of the difference between something going on and our sense of being located in it. Now what I'm talking about here is this practice of noticing particulars. So you begin to notice this sense of location. For example, you can move your sense of location into your breath. Or into your body.

[04:32]

Or into a particular chakra. Or into the field of connectedness in talking to somebody. Now a very simple skill of a practitioner is to become adept at moving this sense of location. This is a point. Okay. And then you can have also a sense of identity, an identity point. Okay. Now, you can move your sense of location out of your thinking into your breath. But you can still remain identifying yourself with your thinking. you can also move that sense of identification out of your thinking to the sense of location and then you can identify with your breath as you and that's very different than being located in your breath

[05:50]

Do you understand? Okay. We have a sense of location. It's part of how we function. Dharma practice is to notice these things and dharma practice is to notice particulars. And dharma practice is whenever something happens, you analyze it into its constituencies. Like the constituencies of the three are you, me, and the field that arises. Okay, now... The Dharma practitioner notices those three, but analyzes them into three, sees the three, but functions as if they were one.

[07:14]

That's what Dharma practice is, to do that. Does that, do you understand? Have I lost some people? This is really quite simple. It's just a matter of getting it clear. Okay. So a Dharma practitioner has the habit of seeing things in their constituents. Like seeing the five skandhas. Form, feeling, perceptions, gatherers, consciousness. Form, Gefühl, Wahrnehmung, Impulse und Bewusstsein. Okay. Now again, this is a teaching, which means what we're interested in is when you see particulars,

[08:22]

and you analyze things into the constituents, you're changing the way you function. It's like instead of pouring a liquid through these pipes, you're pouring the liquid through these pipes. You have a certain life energy that's going into the world and coming back to you through different pathways than it used to. And that changes you. So when you ask a client to use slightly different pathways in how they're apprehending the world, you're changing them, not just giving them an exercise. OK. So we have the point of location. We have the point of identification.

[09:44]

And closely related to those two is the witness. For obviously there has to be a witness to decide to move the point of location into the breath. Does that make sense? Excuse me, I lost one sentence. You have the witness is the third and the first two. The point of location and the point of identification. This is how we're living all the time. But to kind of like separate it out into parts is kind of like a little startling sometimes.

[10:45]

Okay. Now you've got the part about the witness. Okay. The witness is that experience which says, oh, I'll move my location now into my breathing. Now, we tend to think the witness is always the same. As if some kind of permanent mirror in the back. or permanent eye, which decides, well, now I'll concentrate my breathing and now I'll talk to Gerhard or something. But if you begin to bring your attention to the point of location, you'll see that the witness is tied to that point of location.

[11:58]

And the witness is dragged somewhat unwillingly into a slightly different way of seeing things. But the witness says, well, I haven't changed at all. I'm just over here instead of over there. So the witness is constantly convincing itself that it's permanent. So you may intellectually know that everything is impermanent, but you function through a belief in permanence. And as long as you have that functioning through an assumption of permanence, your thoughts will always return to self-regarding, self-identification. or return to your thinking.

[13:09]

It returns to your thinking if you believe that thinking is the description of the world. And primarily, if you believe that the visual dimension of the world is the world. So what I'm trying to point out here is there's quite a big difference, I mean, a world of difference between... intellectually knowing about impermanence and actually functioning through impermanence. If you function through impermanence, you will know that this moment like it's common sense, is absolutely unique. Excuse me for repeating this simple stuff.

[14:10]

but absolutely unique and will never be repeated again. And the more you know this is absolutely unique, it's impermanent. It's absolutely unique. That's what impermanence means. The more you realize this is absolutely unique, your energy will flow into this situation instead of into future considerations and past considerations. So if you're not in this room like it's the end of the world, You basically believe in some kind of permanence. Excuse me for saying it so extremely, but I'm trying to get a point across. Our life is very fragile. We are living here for these moments. And we do have to take care of what happens next and so forth.

[15:39]

But that's a practical matter. That's not where you have to live. Where you live is right here, more than any other place. Oh, and if I say that, you say, oh yeah, here and now, I know that's all true. But is the full energy of your being flowing into this situation? Not because this is a great situation but just because it is the situation. Now a realized person is a person who realizes this. who finds every situation absolutely unique and the last situation. They live it like it was the last situation.

[16:41]

Not because death is near, although it is. He accused me of a fire and brimstone talk the other day. Fire and brimstone? The smell of sulfur, you know. So it's not that death is near, which it is, but life is near when this is the last situation. then this is a realm of being and has its own momentum, own self-organizing processes.

[17:47]

And the more we become embedded in that, the more the situation becomes unpredictable. Hans-Peter Dürr, I don't know if you know him, but he's head of the Max Planck Institute in Munich. And he was Heisenberg's protege. And he... He's an old friend of mine, and I like him very much. And he's become a friend of Ulrike's, and Ulrike invited him to come to her gymnasium to give a presentation to the students, the young science students. They were thrilled, right? And one of the things he did is he showed a little pendulum which swings up and then swings back down one way or the other.

[19:01]

And he showed that when you swing it, you can clearly... There's mathematical equations which describe every point, everything that will happen. But when it reaches the top point, whether it will swing left or right is totally unpredictable. There's no equation which can describe it. This is for you. Wavy. I used to know somebody named Wavy Gravy who had the American flag tattooed, I mean engraved on his teeth. If you've ever seen the movie Woodstock, he's one of the characters. He smiles and he's got the American flag.

[20:02]

But he was being investigated by the Committee on Un-American Activities. Anyway. So at the moment of most creativity, it's unpredictable. And that's what happens when you really know this is unique. There's an immense sense of both truth and unpredictability. So even if we take a little simple teaching, basic teaching like impermanence, and really look at does it function in our life or not, we have something that we could spend the next year or so, six months maybe on.

[21:23]

It's fun to talk with you. So it's 12.30 almost. And the Christendom will soon remind us if we don't remind ourselves. Well, I said Christendom, but yes. Yes. So realms of being, each of these is a realm of being. Perhaps you can have a feeling for the sense of location.

[26:40]

And also the witness or observing mind. Perhaps you can also have a feeling for your sense of identification. And then eventually a relationship among the three. And then eventually a relationship among the three. Well, I'd like to start with the possibility that some of you have some suggestions for

[28:50]

exercises which have a psychological, it can be anything, but what I suggested was exercises which have a psychological purpose and a Buddhist effect. Thank you. So I would have not a suggestion but a question, something which came up also during our lunch. So what is the difference between location and identification?

[30:01]

Anchoring, location, identification. I'll keep using the same examples because it's simpler to get one example clear rather than extending it to other possibilities. I find it very important to continue on that because these are words which are also used in psychotherapy. And in each school, it has quite a bit of different meaning.

[31:04]

So it's quite important to get it clear. Yeah. You know, I'm surprised myself at, for instance, my experience. I'm surprised myself, for example, my experience. Of trying to break through the private-public barrier and trying to break through. Breakthrough is maybe too strong a word, but I'm using it. But then again, maybe it's too weak a word. To break through the... spin on the world that civil society gives the world for us.

[32:07]

They use the expression to put a spin on a story to make it like Clinton puts a spin on a story so you understand it his way. I see civil society. By that I mean this transactional relationship of government, commerce, and the media, as creating a very convincing And my attempt to kind of get past that so I can practice has led me to come up with very similar ideas to Foucault's, for instance.

[33:19]

Sometimes I read him, but mostly I read him for his language. because sometimes his language is so good, not so much for what he's saying. So I'm just saying that because we have the same problem. If I'm practicing, I'm trying to come up with language or something, and then it's similar to various psychological schools, how do we sort it out? Because this idea of a sense of allocation is, I don't know, it's just something I've discovered as a way of talking about it. So I apologize that I can't speak about it in a more informed way in relationship to current psychological theories.

[34:20]

Don't go so fast. You don't go so fast. No. So if you bring your sense of location to your breath, say, but the tendency of that sense of location to shift back to thinking, or to self-regarding thoughts, means that it's not a sense of identification, it's only a sense of location.

[35:28]

It becomes a sense of identification when you identify the breath as yourself. as much as or more than your thinking. Identify your breath as who you are, as much as identifying your thinking or particular witnessing processes as self. Is that a clear enough definition? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Suggested is the same way. This is a reduce. Okay, so when you had a conversation, you defined it similar to what I defined it in.

[36:30]

They're good, we're purifying the Buddhafield. They're good, we're purifying the Buddhafield. On to your question, I just can speak from my approach with the cognitive behavioral approach in therapy. I was quite amazed to speak German. You might give little pauses so he can translate. So maybe I said that it's about the back cognitive therapy, and I taught it to patients, and they ended up, as I asked, what did you get from the therapy?

[37:39]

They said, I'm just much more mindful and aware. I was quite amazed because I did teach it. Yeah. And the process was... You didn't teach mindfulness. I didn't teach mindfulness. And this kind of cognitive fear work, maybe you come into a room with people like this, you feel bad. And the cognitive therapist teaches you to pay attention to your automatic thought. And this could be maybe the people will abuse me or I won't pass the final exam or things like this. And then you try to challenge the soul and say, no, I'm a person like every person. It's not a bad or mega mistake. That's OK. You have antidotal thinking. Yes. And the patients then think that they are much more conscious in their whole life. This is a very high level of negative feelings, fear or tension, when you come into such a group with these.

[38:44]

And then the patient may find out that he has a very high level of anxiety. So people are saying, I've kept generalizing, but now I'm doing this exercise to be more aware. Yeah, what you said would be a good field for developing therapies which are also teachings. So I simplified it into therapies and teachings and doing two things at once in that way.

[39:55]

Yes? Yes. And I have got difficulties to distinguish between the witness and the location because... So anchoring or locating is realized or you get aware of anchoring or location when the location is changing. You get aware of the... What do you mean by anchoring? The feeling of location.

[40:57]

Okay, the feeling of location, you're saying, now how does that relate to the witness? You're not distinguishing between them? You observe the process. Yeah. And that's witnessing? Yes. Yes. So, okay, so what is the question then? I don't know the difference between anchoring and witnessing. I see. Well, my experience is that if I decide to move my attention from, say, my thinking to my breath. There's a whitening place which is neither my thinking nor my breath. Okay. Would that be your experience? then that witnessing is separate from the sense of location.

[42:26]

Yes? No? Okay. And we tend to reify that sense of witnessing because it's separate from both thinking and the sense of location. We tend to think of it as more permanent or more hierarchically important than either the sense of location or the thinking. Now one leading contemporary philosopher, since he's a friend of mine now, he'll remain unnamed, sees this sense of witnessing as a regression to a big witness that is everything all at once.

[43:47]

He's very logical and it makes sense, but I don't agree. I think that every state of mind has the capacity to create a witnessing function. In fact, we have many witnesses, but we have the sensation there's only one. And when you begin to notice something like moving your sense of location to your breath, and then, let's say, using your word, anchoring it in the breath, which I would say is another process which leads to identifying with the breath, You begin to notice that the witness is tied to that and comes along with it.

[45:04]

My own experience is that the witnessing and the sense of location are actually connected. The point would be that If you keep changing your sense of location, anchoring it somewhere else, you actually change what is the witnessing or who is the witnessing of your life. At least you change the what first and the who comes along, maybe. Because we're stuck with, we give more permanence to the who than the what. Does that make sense in German?

[46:07]

I don't know. Yeah. Now, let me just say that the importance of getting these definitions clear and shared, because if these definitions begin to affect the way you function, It's a big responsibility, actually. We create definitions which then influence how another person functions. The... there's processes that lead from that.

[47:13]

There's a sequentiality to these teachings. In other words, if we get a certain definition clear, that leads to a further definition, which wouldn't be possible if the first definition was slightly different. Pedagogical is a way of putting something down completely. It's worse than being pedestrian to be pedagogical. No, no. Pedestrian means someone who walks. And so that's very low in our present culture.

[48:19]

You're supposed to be in a Jaguar or something. Yeah, it's come to mean somebody who's simple. Yeah. So a pedagogical pedestrian would be somebody who had to be taught how to walk. But in Buddhism we do teach people how to walk. Something else. Whether we use language because there is a separation between subject and object in the witness. It's not in a non-English-Roman language to separate between those two.

[49:37]

As soon as, if I understand you correctly, as soon as you are in a non-language state of mind, the witness is... It vanishes a little more to the edge of the field. I think at least you need, if you have a witness, at least you have a symbolic split like subject-object or observer-observed. Observer... You referred to Lacan, he said, we are not, we don't speak, we are spoken, because language is before the human being is born into the structure, and I feel this is a kind of, so when you have such an observer, that you often have to do with the language, because Lacan says, we don't learn to speak, we are born, the language is already there, and it takes us, so to speak, in a certain form. Also, if he doesn't... Sorry, he always says it's connected to language, that's what...

[50:53]

My own experience is you can witness a non-language state of mind. Going from where you observe, it's at least symbolical or pre-symbolical. If there's no witness, there's no language. The sense of identification you need to witness something is a kind of crystallization, which best could be expressed by a kind felt symbol, at least, and often it's kind of, it's pre-verbal, but very close to the barrier where inner thinking starts. Well, I think my own feeling is

[52:24]

that we need to have this kind of discussion. It's lonely to have these discussions with oneself. And the degree to which we can and join others in this conversation. Is also the degree to which we can give us ourselves further permission to explore these things. But I think we have to be careful not to get the language and logic of the possibilities ahead of our experience. And if our language or the logical possibilities of an experience, get ahead of our experience of it, we better very quickly slow down and check it up with our actual experience.

[53:43]

And our experience should lead the logic, not vice versa. Anyway, my experience is that I have enough various experiences with witnessing minds, which I wouldn't say they're all tied to language, but some are completely language-based. Yes. I would like to present an exercise that I often do in groups. I'm doing this practice in groups and I want to know whether it is connected to what we are talking about right now.

[54:58]

So I tell them, why don't you stand in the room. And the place where you stand represents the ego. And then I'm giving them some practices to raise awareness. Your body and your center of gravity. Let me get the picture again. There's a group of people and you say, what represents the ego? Look for a place. Where you stand now, for your existence now.

[56:03]

Okay, so where I happen to be now, for example, yeah. And you say this is also the place of the ego. You normally call this the ego. The me. The me, okay. Okay, I understand. So there's not one me in the room, each person represents a me, yeah. Of the time of arriving at this place. Mm-hmm. I don't want to imagine that there is one function in ourselves which is always present, which could be the witness. which is a function of self-awareness, of witnessing.

[57:14]

And when I got their agreement non-verbally, I tell them to externalize their witness as if he would be beside you or near you. And I asked them, if you would agree on this suggestion, where would this witness stand in front of you, behind you, beside you?

[58:14]

And after some time, I asked everybody, please go to the place where the witness stands. and to witness and to observe the me. And to feel the special quality of this place, of the place of the witness, to observe things without judging it. Okay, in other words, you separate the witnessing function from the me experience. And you ask the person to... let the witness take whatever place it does in your vicinity.

[59:20]

And once the witness has found his or her location, you ask the person to shift their identification to the witness away from the me. No, that is the next step. That's the next step. Oh, sorry. To shift physically, that's the next step. Oh, you actually, they move physically and take this other place, yeah, I see. And to... First you feel the quality of the me-place, then you feel the quality of the witness. And you feel the way of perception and of the relationship.

[60:39]

And after some time I tell them, please go back and feel again from this place the quality of being seen. And I let them change several times. Sometimes also asking questions. So it's a kind of personal sculpting. . And then I tell them to go back to the place of the witness and to identify with the witness.

[61:41]

To act as if the witness would be the me. As if this would be the center of the person. And sometimes I also have other functions externalized. Like what would be another function you'd externalize? For instance, unconditional love. Or a negative function. A symptom. And now I suggest that it's a symptom. No, I suggest with the witness.

[62:45]

Okay. and what I tell them to identify with that, and then I let... so that people can see that they can identify with one place or another place, so that it doesn't really matter. I understand. So you can change and shift. Zuletzt lasse ich dann Sie probieren, And then at the end, I ask them to integrate all these different positions in their into their position of the witness, I'm sorry. Or in the position of the more distant love.

[63:47]

So leave it as an experiment, and people can exchange their experiences and share the experience as well. Yeah. Can I go into therapy with you? As far as I know, there's nothing in Buddhism like that. But it's part and parcel, as we say, of the same way of thinking. But normally you would do a process similar to that in your meditation. But to act it out with another person as a way of learning it,

[65:00]

This is quite, at least new to Buddhism, for sure. And I think it's great. I mean, I think it's a great way to work with these things. The closest thing to it is we do work with with purifying our psychic space, sensing what's around us and who's around us. And that's similar. And we also work with reversibility of location. In other words, if I'm having a discussion with you, I try to really experience it from your point of view.

[66:07]

That's a kind of reversibility or exchange. And another is the exchanging of self and other. I try to experience various aspects of myself from your point of view. And I try to put myself in your place. And if necessary, if I can't feel it, I go back to when you were a baby. I go back to the point at which I can feel empathy with you. For Austrians, it's around eight. And then I try to grow up in that. from the point that I can feel empathy.

[67:22]

And those are practices having to do with developing the mutuality of Sangha. So it's similar territory, but it's different. Yeah. But that what you just described, we are doing all the day long, all the day. All the day, very often, very often. So that we ask people in our groups to identify with their parents or with one of their parents. And to go back in their childhood and to feel their development It's the same process.

[68:32]

Yeah. In Gestalt Therapy, where I come from, in Gestalt Therapy it's a basic technique, the dialogical element. So I'm talking to somebody, and then I go to his place or her place, and then I'm talking again. Yeah, I understand. Well, you know, I think... Yeah, go ahead. So many people ending dead ends. Because you think, what did I wrong, or why is this person so mad at me, or what is wrong?

[69:42]

So they are doing that quite a while, and then they are coming to the therapist, So what I am doing is to get them out of thinking and asking them, what are you feeling right now? Suddenly they are in a different field. So to give an example, two days ago I had a woman who is very unsatisfied with her husband because he doesn't really want her. So then I made an experiment acting as her husband and saying, I want you as my wife.

[70:49]

Suddenly she backed up two steps. So she was thinking or she said, I have been waiting for that sentence for two years. Why am I not happy about that? And I told her, it doesn't matter. Back up as much as you want and then feel how it feels. And suddenly it was possible for her to have a completely different attitude and identity. So through this change of thinking, for example, to feel and simply take it seriously, or to ask herself why, but because it is the way it is, that was for

[71:58]

So suddenly a different kind of identity was possible because she didn't think she was just feeling from this hour, or she went away from this hour with a different identity, a different feeling, a different attitude. In Buddhism, this would all be considered a dharmic process. Basically, analyzing things into their constituents. Constituents. How they are constituted. And then you're moving your sense of identification among the constituents. And that's the basic process of dharma, dharmic thinking, and it seems to be, it's part of now western psychology, it looks like. Also part of, yeah. Your story made me think of that old joke about the woman who goes to a therapist because her husband thinks he's a refrigerator.

[73:34]

Do you know that story? So the therapist says, well, It's harmless enough. If he thinks he's a refrigerator, let him think he's a refrigerator. And she says, well, okay, but when he sleeps with his mouth open, the light keeps me awake. Sorry to tell you that. Okay, something else? So in the systemic therapy there is a certain way of approach.

[74:40]

So if somebody is telling you a problem, So you can do this practice with a person or with a family and you ask everybody what everybody is contributing so that the problem persists or can persist. Which thought and which way of behavior? So how you act that this problem can persist. And afterwards you explore which different ways of behavior or thinking or acting would dissolve or even only diminish the problem. And you're inviting the people until you meet the next time?

[75:59]

To ask them to make some rituals or experiments? So you should observe yourself when you are using this behaviour or that behaviour. Yes, yes. So on the odd days, you asked them to act to diminish the problem.

[77:04]

On the odd days? You have days with one and two. Oh, like 13, 15, 15. How do you call it? Odd days, yeah. I just didn't know. It could have been just a peculiar day. And the contrary of odd days? What? Even. On the even days you ask them to act that their problem persists, and on the odd days you ask them that they act in a way, or think in a way, or behave in a way. Can I do therapy with you too, with the former Zen center? Today is Sunday and Sunday is the day. Oh, okay. But on Monday... On Sunday everybody does what he wants to do. because Sunday is one of the odd not always you're counting from one to seven Sunday would be extra day so it's not fair that's what God thought okay

[78:18]

Should I say something about these things? It's 4.20. Should we go on for a little bit and then take a break? Okay. So I have to explain what is meant by a realm. And after I finish, you can tell me you've been doing this every day. I hope so. Okay. Now, one way of defining selflessness is when... when thinking no longer returns to self.

[79:38]

In other words, when your thinking doesn't keep going back to self-regarding thoughts. As long as your thinking keeps returning to self-regarding thoughts, how this affects me, etc., we could say you're in a self realm. In other words, does that make sense? So... The experience of selflessness, if we look at it as a process And a practice, it's not about having no self, it's about not having the self the center of everything. Also, what goes into this idea of a realm, is thinking of the primary dimension of us human beings as a spatial dimension, not a time dimension.

[81:00]

In Buddhist thinking, we're first of all spatial, beings, not temporal beings. We're also temporal beings, but secondarily we're temporal beings. Now, I've often presented the idea that space connects. So for the one or two of you who are new, I'll just say what that is. We generally assume that space separates you from me. We take that so for granted, it's just obvious, it's truth.

[82:02]

But it's also clear that space connects us. Otherwise, women's and men's reproductive cycles would not be tied to the moon. There's all kinds of ways that are outside of our senses that we're connected. So the idea that space separates is a cultural idea. And it's also the bias of our seemingly three-dimensional sensorium. let me say that again slowly, the bias of our seemingly three-dimensional sensorium. In other words, bias is a systematic error. So when you look at something, these simple things very carefully, just like a scientist looks very simply at something, the repercussions of it are quite amazing.

[83:27]

If you just look at the fact that knowing that space does connect, then you look at the fact that we don't perceive it. And you come to the conclusion then that our sense our sensorium, the world presented to us through our senses, is an immense simplification of the world. Just as our thinking is much simpler than the complexity of us, so our sense world is much simpler than the world actually is. So the degree to which space, the ways in which we're connected by space, is outside of our ability to perceive.

[84:33]

We can know it and we can sense it. You can't perceive it exactly in any particular category of the senses. Is that clear enough? Okay. So if space connects... It can also be connected. In other words, we can do things to weave or affect the connectedness of space. I'm using language the best I can. You can't take... I take my words too literally, but I'm doing the best I can.

[85:41]

So a realm represents the sense of a spatial dimension of being. Okay. If we are all in self-regarding realms, we will reinforce each other person's self-regarding realm. And you also create a strong sense of separateness. But if one person takes themselves out of the self-regarding realm, you actually make it difficult for everybody else in the field to keep their needle in that groove.

[86:42]

Okay. that I'm cautious about, but interested in the way the new technology gives us images for a mentality. I'll give you this example, though. They've developed these new discs, which everybody's heard about, called DVDs. DVD stands for digital video disc. But it also stands for digital versatile disc. Versatile means able to do anything. Passepartout, something like that.

[87:56]

And then it's also become, now they have DVD audio discs, where DVD doesn't mean anything except the same technology. Now what they're trying to do is they're trying to develop a... DVD disc, which can be played on ordinary CDs. This is a commerce-driven technology. Commerce and karmis. Anyway... Karma. Karma. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. How cute. Yeah. Have you noticed before?

[89:06]

No idea. So what they're planning to do is sell discs that can be played in your ordinary CD player, because no one's going to replace their CD players. So they're going to record both on the same disc at different layers. So the DVD will be at 0.6 millimeters. And the CD, the usual one, will be at one point. And the light that, I don't have to explain it in such detail, but the film which the DVD is recorded on is invisible to the CD light.

[90:22]

So it looks right past it. Yeah. Ones at 780 nanometers and something. Okay. Okay. And interestingly enough, to take the metaphor one more step, the visual world is so information rich that it takes up all the space on even a DVD disc of this size. So there's not much left for the sound. So they have what's called lossy, meaning losing, lossy compression. Just lossy compression is the technical word. It's from the word loss. So they take away all the sounds they think we don't hear. And then they compress the remaining ones.

[91:44]

And basically, I think that's what we human beings do. We... Okay, you've got that image of the CD player, okay? Now, if I close my eyes, and I open them again, most of you are still here. Now, if I hear a train or a bird or a child, It doesn't repeat itself. And if it does repeat itself, we think something's wrong.

[92:48]

A car horn or fire engine or a child crying. So sound tends to be sporadic. And... Okay. Now we, because again, I'm giving you these examples of our tendency toward permanence, because we prefer predictability, which is permanence, we establish a sense of continuity through the visual world. And we suppress or don't notice much of the audio tissue that's going on. For instance, if you hear the birds in the morning, you hear this sound, that sound, it's nice.

[94:05]

But if you practice with moving your sense of continuity to sounds, maybe on even days with Sunday off, you'll find that among the bird sounds, for instance, which is an obvious example, there's actually quite a pattern going on, even among various different kinds of birds. You'll find all the birds together somehow are creating a pattern, although they're all singing separately. So one of these exercises, which is also a teaching you could give to people, which would be a teaching of mindfulness, and a teaching of establishing continuity in something that's sporadic or unpredictable.

[95:29]

So if you ask yourself or a client, spend the next week or so, whatever length of time, see if you can keep noticing all day long sounds.

[95:36]

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